Re:US travel firm $4.5M ransom negotiation open chat
by ric2b on Monday August 03, 2020 @06:19AM
(#24035999)
> what happens when miner traffic itself is disrupted and the network is forcibly split between China and the rest of the world?
How would this be done? It only takes a single node capable of connecting to both networks to keep the whole thing working. There are already many nodes working with satellite connections so I'm pretty sure this can't be done even by state actors.
Re:US travel firm $4.5M ransom negotiation open chat
by yyyk on Monday August 03, 2020 @06:07PM
(#24044029)
A satellite connection is still dependent on BGP routing to get to China/RoW and still goes via the Great Firewall to connect to China (if outside of China, not sure on how the miners in China do it - possibly they don't have satellite equipment at all). Poisoning BGP routes is well within the capability of state actors, and China could of course decide to block its firewall.
Re:US travel firm $4.5M ransom negotiation open chat
by vmception on Monday August 03, 2020 @12:06AM
(#24034131)
sure yeah, a deflationary currency crashes back to $2.50 and institutions are turned off of it for good
but the utility stays the same at $2.50 or $25,000 (offline-for-most, stateless monetary system with managed/predictable supply)
the same utility is inherited by most of other blockchain technologies
Anyway, we don't need a 100% effective ban to get an effect. A 90% ban may well be good enough for any practical purpose. Your example is a good one - sure, there are ways to get around 'internet kill switches' several countries have, but in practice these (unfortunately) work.
The fact that some people in a cafe can get one cryptocurrency transfer going is no defeat for a ban, so long as the ban is effective enough to reach its intended effects (e.g. making ransomware useless).